Le Meridien Brazzaville

... Kept driving on till we reached customs and the town of Okoyo.<br><br>We also bogged in this town filling the jerry cans from the well. From the town the roads are still being constructed (with sand of course), but much larger width-wise and helped by the Chinese. So it's still sandy roads for us. At the small town of Boundji we stopped for cold drinks and had our first Primus beer of the trip. Bush camping off the road outside of town.<br><br>Dist cov. = 137 km<br><br ...

... at rivers to wash (though not frequent enough!!), and certainly did not appreciate having to dig out the truck shortly afterward! But Chris knows how to keep the troops happy, and made appropriate cold beer stops in the late afternoon before finding the next bushcamp<br> Traditional mud and wooden hut villages returned, along with more traditional dress/fabrics. The excited waves from locals also indicated that not many tourists travel our route. The jungle thinned ...

... Peace and quiet is all I want. We went for a little car trip today. There are some really amazing houses here. But the most amazing of the houses belong to the people on top when Mobutu was still in power. He was the psycho dictator who is responsible for a lot of the **** happening now. Nywho, I am starving. I have an ugly feeling all there is in the house is chicken. Sigh... :P I have to say though, the juice they have here is AMAZING!!! You can taste ...

... cow behind the counter asked for $NZ165). $99!! What the hell!! What?! I don't know what to say. I really dont. Charging prices like that in a supermarket and paying the people who work there only $US30 a month should be a crime. It should. Such a disgustingly apparent social scale... so I asked my dad, why he did not go shopping where the people who work in these supermarkets go shopping. He said he had asked the guy who takes care of the apartment to do so. He gave him ...

... tropical wood from Congo's enormous rain forests in the north of country.It's also possible to join these journeys up river as a passenger,but it can take weeks to arrive. For breakfast, the best place in town, and where the elite of Brazza meets every morning before going to work, is called "Mandarine", a Libanese boulangerie on Avenue Foch with lots of atmosphere and a nice outdoor cafe.Just like on the ...

... enough to drown a car. We had to proceed carefully and drove all over the road, wherever we could pass. Generose had just had her appendix out and was still in some pain from the operation. She asked that I pray for her, which I was happy to do. We talked with her and some of her children for a while, and drank a soda which they locally call a sucrerie: a sweet. I took her photo before we left and we started back to the hotel. On the way I started shooting ...

... to be able to meet regularly without hindrance. Jacob is confronting resistance from his landlord because people gather in his living room on Saturday for a Church service. "This just isn't done." I took notes. We'll discuss this further tomorrow. They left shortly before lunchtime. In the afternoon François Bamongo came by the hotel. We went back out to the garden area to chat away from the lobby crowds. He has been a church member for about 30 years, and has ...

... to rewrite the constitution, journalists beaten up in a Minister's office, MONUC moved to express its 'deep shock' at 'extreme violence' after demonstrators threw stones at peacekeepers in ...

... kind of establishment in Africa, not overly clean, but acceptable by local standards. Most had showers, though the bucket full of water in each shower stall indicated the water wasn't working or at least didn't work all the time. There was a decent meeting room with electricity, and we could rent the use of the kitchen. The cost was four dollars per bed per night, ten dollars to rent the kitchen for the whole eight days, and they'd throw the meeting room in for free. And ...

... every 3 days although on my record day I managed 4 separate flights. These aircraft have, again, covered extremes. The UN operated 727s work my regular Kinshasa, Kissanghani, Entebbe route. Lighter Caravans and Beachcraft have taken me from main hubs to the field offices and, on one memorable occasion, a 4 seat Cessna Skylane, flow by a 74 year old pilot and operated my Avion Sans Frontier took me off to the remote project outside Aru. Continuing ...